15 Days
by Lumielt
Summary: What if the Saviour never kissed Henry and broke the Curse? Flash fiction, AU from the Season One finale onwards.


Henry, her son, her baby, the Believer, falls to the floor, apple pastry tumbling from his suddenly pallid fingers. Emma screams his name, then again, and again, each time with more panic, a higher pitch.

She feels weak, about to collapse, but somehow the Saviour-that's what she has to be, right, if everything Henry said was true?-somehow she finds enough strength in her arms to carry her son's body out of Mary Margaret's apartment building and into the little yellow bug at the curb. Unconscious, he seems smaller than even ten minutes beforehand, all of his steady faith and insistant, enthusiastic personality gone, their absence somehow turning a little boy even littler.

Emma drives to the hospital without stopping; she hardly sees the red lights and stop signs, swerving around other cars and, at one point, narrowly avoiding Ruby crossing the street.

Doctors and nurses move in urgent, dreamlike motions. Regina bursts into the room as Henry's moved to a wheeled bed, hooked up to machines that beep like robots.

Whale delivers the bad news in a low, sorry voice. Henry is gone.

Emma doesn't remember a lot after that. Sinking into a chair nearby-actually, maybe it was just the floor-gritting her teeth and cradling her head in her hands and crying like a child. Screaming at Regina, blaming and getting blamed by Regina, slapping Regina across the face. The two almost explode into a full fledged physical fight, but they're pulled apart by several alarmed doctors before it can happen.

David and Mary Margaret are the next to arrive. Mary Margaret hugs Emma tightly for a long, long time, then drives her home. Whale pulls a sheet over Henry's still, pale body.

If he looked small unconscious, he's even smaller in death. A tiny body emptied of it's large heart and giant soul.

Day 1.

A steady stream of people move through the apartment. Granny and Ruby bring food that Emma never eats. Ruby, face solemn and sorrowful with her usual bright makeup and sly smile, leaves a cup of hot chocolate for Henry on the windowsill. It's a move that strikes Emma as vaguely pagan, ancient, wild, but the gesture is sweet. She even puts cinnamon on top.

No one else stands out much in Emma's memories. Katherine, several of the nuns, Leroy, Archie, others. A blur of tearful people in black, all telling her how sorry they are.

Day 2.

David and Mary Margaret never leave Emma's side, and she's glad. She doesn't want to be alone.

The clock over the library seems to have gone slow. It's never exactly right any more, always a few minutes off.

Day 4.

Mary Margaret gives Emma all of Henry's schoolwork from her classroom: book reports, art projects, a finished but not-yet-graded math test.

"Where's the rest of it?" Emma asks.

"This is all I have. I'm sorry," Mary Margaret replies, then echoes her own self. "This is all I have."

"All of his things," Emma mumbles, running a hand through her hair as she stands. "Regina has all of his things."

She isn't sure she blames magic for Henry's death. It was a coincidence, right? An awful, deadly, tragic coincidence.

But it was still Regina's baking that did it.

"Emma, I don't think you should-" Mary Margaret starts, but Emma is already out the door.

This time there are no nearby doctors to stop a physical fight, and Regina knows it, locking her door and ignoring the blonde yelling threats on her porch. Regina's wrapped up in her own mourning and self-loathing, and she doesn't have a crowd in black to murmur support and so-sorry-for-your-loss to her.

Emma has a gun, and she thinks about using it-but she ends up slumped against the front door, trying not to sob and failing miserably.

The clock over the library falters, stops, and then starts again, a full half-hour behind the correct time.

Day 7.

It shouldn't hurt less after only a week.

But it does. Emma catches herself spending whole hours not thinking of Henry. She doesn't shut herself up in Mary Margaret's apartment anymore, instead returning to her duties as Sheriff. People wave as they pass in the street, and Emma finds herself waving cheerfully back.

The clock stops for a full hour, before slowly shuddering to a start again.

Day 10.

Emma's always been Sheriff, right? She's lived her whole life in Storybrooke, and she's always lived with Mary Margaret, always been the head of the police.

She shouldn't have these vague, fleeting memories of another life, right? A big city, a lonely childhood, a lonely child (her child, "kid," Henry, her Henry), jail, a boyfriend, a book (Henry's book, her Henry), another sheriff once upon a time.

The memories leave as quickly as they come, and Emma does her best to shrug them off.

Day 14.

Emma performs her duties cheerfully; eating lunch at Granny's every afternoon, patrolling occasionally in the Sheriff's car, and making sure all of Storybrooke is safe and sound.

"Madam Mayor," she waves in greeting when she sees the other woman, as she always does.

"Sheriff Swan." Regina replies coldly, as she always does. (Emma doesn't know what she did to make Regina dislike her so much; her best guess is that Regina thinks she's slacking off. Maybe she should step up patrols?)

The clock tower is stuck again. There's something important about the clock over the library, but for the life of her, Emma can't remember what it is.

Day 15.

Emma's always been Sheriff. She's lived her whole life in Storybrooke, and she's always lived with Mary Margaret, always been the head of the police.

The clock tower's stopped at 8:15, just like it always is.


End file.
